Zack Snyder Is Much Closer To Making Xerxes Than You Think

It was just last week that we first learned Zack Snyder would officially be tackling Xerxes, a project based on Frank Miller's next graphic novel that's sort of a parallel story to 300, about the Battle of Artemisium happening at the same historical point as the Battle of Thermopylae seen in 300. Snyder claimed he and co-writer Kurt Johnstad had just started writing the script a week ago, but when we caught up with the director last week at Comic Con, he revealed that they've got a lot more place than you might have expected:

I'm using Frank's frames to whack at this, using the same process Kurt and I used when we wrote 300. Sometimes we don't have images-- we're a little ahead of him right now. We have an outline, we have dialogue, it's pretty detailed. We might double back once we get the pictures to fill in if there's something cool, which there certainly will be.

It might seem a little risky for Snyder and Johnstad to start putting together a script without knowing what Miller's final product will look like, but given how faithful the director was to Miller's book with 300, he's probably got a good sense of what to expect. Either way, the quick pace of developing the screenplay might indicate that Xerxes could be coming sooner than we think-- I guess we'll have to wait and see if Sucker Punch is another 300-sized hit next spring before figuring out exactly how big to expect Xerxes to be.

Much more from our conversation with Snyder and his producer and wife Deborah, about Sucker Punch and awesome bunnies, coming later today.